


all this bad blood here

by WeeBeastie



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Gun Violence, M/M, Silver has a pet sloth, Thomas died AU, Treasure Island AU sorta, post-s4 fix it(?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 21:03:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13466493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeeBeastie/pseuds/WeeBeastie
Summary: won't you let it dry?it's been cold for years, won't you let it lie?[8.8k of post-season 4 angst with a happy ending]





	all this bad blood here

**Author's Note:**

> This thing took over my life, y'all. Thank you to scrap and my Tumblr crew for all the encouragement; I couldn't have finished this beast without you. <3
> 
> Title and lyrics in the summary taken from 'Bad Blood' by Bastille, which I've been listening to on repeat for weeks. A version of Jim Hawkins borrowed/adapted from Treasure Island (imagine him as a young Jonathan Rhys Meyers, here). 
> 
> Forgive me in advance if the formatting is less than perfect - Google Docs lost its mind a little while I was writing this. :/

It all ends, and begins, in Savannah. 

Silver tells him that Thomas is there, awaiting him, on a plantation having served years of hard, miserable labor. Alive and whole in spite of it all. 

Silver tells him that it shouldn’t be all that difficult to free Thomas and flee. Not for Flint.

Silver is wrong about everything. 

Thomas isn’t there. Or rather, he is, but Flint’s timing proves incredibly, devastatingly unfortunate - Thomas passed away a fortnight before his arrival, from a fever that swept through the plantation and left scores dead in its wake. They show Flint to a fresh grave as proof, and leave him alone for a moment, shackled, to kneel in the soft earth and contemplate the sick, monstrous pain of enduring his love’s death twice over. He wishes he hadn’t listened to Silver; a part of him wishes he’d killed him on Skeleton Island instead. Not that it would fix anything, or bring Thomas back, but it might’ve given him some kind of strange satisfaction, at least. 

So he flees the plantation, leaves Savannah. It’s not easy, not like Silver said it would be, but he manages. He’s defeated; his war is in ruins, his life in tatters, his last hope all but extinguished. He blames Silver for it, of course. Not that he caused Thomas’s death, but - did he know? Was he lying to Flint about Thomas being alive, to get him to give up on his war? He tells himself that even Silver wouldn’t be so beastly as to give him that profound a false hope, but he has to wonder. 

Slowly it eats away at him, the way Silver behaved, the things he said on that island. Worse perhaps than the fact that he ended Flint’s war before it could begin, worse than the idea that he ruined his own future with Madi, is the pure and bitter betrayal of how close he and Flint had been and how easy it seemingly was for Silver to cast aside their relationship when it suited him. Flint tortures himself thinking that perhaps they never were that close, after all; that Silver is such a master manipulator he convincingly faked his way through what Flint believed to be a deep and true friendship. Something beyond friendship, even - closer, in fact, to love. Could anyone stoop so low?

He spends several long years avoiding to the best of his abilities the innumerable ghosts of his past. He doesn’t stay too long in any one place, and he avoids people who remind him of those he’s lost to death or to deception. After a time, a drumbeat begins within him, a soft, insidious voice chanting: kill him. Kill him, kill him, kill him. 

He grows out his hair again. He goes by different names, disguises himself as another man. When he hears that Captain Flint has died of rum in Savannah, he thinks, good. All the while the voice whispers, then slowly grows louder. It speaks. It shouts. Kill him! Kill him. 

He doesn’t want to return to Nassau ever again, feels sick at the thought, but if he is to find and extinguish the man he once thought he knew, it seems as good a place as any to start looking. He finds passage as part of the crew on a merchant vessel - he is, after all, still a more than capable sailor - and arrives in the Caribbean again in short order. 

His first stop in Nassau is the brothel. He’s not particularly surprised to see that he recognizes no one there - not one familiar face among them. Fortunately, that means none of them know him, either. The last thing he needs is some nitwit raising the alarm about Captain Flint returning from the grave. 

He slips the unfamiliar barman a few extra coins when he brings him a cup of watered-down rum. 

“Long John Silver,” he says, looking into the man’s eyes. 

“What about him?” the bartender responds, twirling one coin idly in his fingers. 

“Do you know where he is?” Flint inquires. “Is he here?” he adds, feeling a tremor run through his body at the thought.

“Upstairs, first room on the left,” he says, and Flint slides him another coin across the bar for his trouble. He abandons his mostly-full cup of rum and heads towards the staircase, hearing every one of his own footsteps echoing loud and final in his ears. This is it. This is the end. He won’t make it out alive after, he’s sure - Silver must have henchmen. A crew. Maybe even his own quartermaster, by now. Flint will kill Silver, Silver's men will kill him, and everything will be done. Finished. The blood that’s been spilled between them will dry at last. 

He knocks loudly on the door to the first room on the left. A young man, maybe all of eighteen years old, opens it - he’s shorter than Flint, with brown hair shaved close, enormous blue eyes, and full lips that under other circumstances might make Flint look twice. This, clearly, is not Silver. Chameleon though he may be, even he couldn’t possibly change his looks so drastically. Besides, this man has two legs. 

“What?” the man barks, drawing himself up like he’s trying to seem of a height with Flint (it doesn’t work). 

“Long John Silver. He here?” Flint replies, feeling a muscle in his face twitch. 

“Who’s asking?” the man growls, folding his arms over his chest. Flint doesn’t miss how his muscles flex; he knows when he’s being threatened. 

“Captain Flint,” he spits, the name sour and dry like ashes in his mouth. 

A look of realization slowly arrives on the young stranger’s face. “Ain't you supposed to be dead? Don’t think Cap’n wants to see you,” he says softly to Flint. 

“Hawkins!” a familiar voice bellows from somewhere over the man’s right shoulder, deep within the room. “Who is it?”

The man - Hawkins - looks decidedly uncomfortable, hesitating before he replies. “He says he's Captain Flint, sir.”

There’s a long pause. Then, “Let him in.”

Hawkins steps aside and Flint stalks into the dark, close room, his hand already on the pistol at his hip. As his eyes adjust, he takes in the scene: they're in the sitting room of what was once a grand suite but has since fallen into disrepair. The wallpaper is peeling, the furniture weathered, and the ornate rug Flint finds himself standing on has certainly seen better days. Sitting behind a dilapidated wooden desk is none other than Silver himself - a bit older perhaps, but still immediately recognizable. There's some kind of exotic furry creature in a cage suspended from the ceiling behind him, but Flint is too preoccupied with Silver to care what it is.

“Flint,” Silver says, like a benediction and a curse.

“Silver,” Flint replies, them draws the pistol. “You--” he snarls, then finds himself utterly lost for words.

“Stop!” Silver shouts, and it takes Flint a moment to realize he's not talking to him but rather to Hawkins, who's suddenly right behind Flint with a knife in hand, ready to pounce. “Jim, lad. Let him say whatever he came here to say,” Silver intones, then looks steadily at Flint. He's remarkably calm for a man with a gun trained on the space between his eyes. Perhaps, Flint thinks wildly, he’s been expecting this. Hawkins backs down, receding into the shadows with only a little discontented muttering. 

“I came here to kill you,” Flint growls at Silver. “Because you knew, damn you. He was dead and you _knew_!” His voice cracks on the word ‘dead.’

Silver’s face changes. He looks confused, and then, remarkably, devastated. “Thomas...he’s dead?” he asks, placing his palms flat on the desk as though to brace himself. 

“As if you didn’t know?” Flint spits accusingly. “You really want me to believe you sent me there, to that godforsaken place, expecting that Thomas was alive and well and that I would truly be reunited with him?” Flint asks. Unbidden, the arm holding the pistol drops. He declines to holster the weapon, though, staring uncertainly at Silver with his finger still on the trigger. 

“I didn’t. I know I have no way to prove it, but— Flint, by god. How much of a monster must you think me, that you’re so convinced I would knowingly send you into the arms of a dead man?” Silver asks, hoarse. “I would never.”

“You truly didn’t know?” Flint murmurs warily, not sure he believes him just yet. “You thought you were...giving Thomas back to me,” he says, reeling. The voice telling him to kill Silver has gone quiet for the moment, back to whispering instead of shouting.

“I didn’t. I know I’ve lied to you before, god knows you’ve no reason to trust me. But had I known Thomas was already dead…” Here he trails off, his blue eyes unfocused, lost in another time and place. In what could’ve been. 

Flint can’t look at him anymore, so he looks down at the desk instead and is startled to realize Silver’s got a detailed map of Skeleton Island there, open, drawn in a hand that’s neither his nor Flint’s but looks familiar somehow anyway.   
It also has the treasure marked in entirely the wrong spot. 

“You’re going back?” Flint asks before he can stop himself. He’s aghast. 

Silver snaps visibly back to the present. “Yes,” he says, looking up at Flint. One hand runs obsessively over the map, fingers tracing swirls in the sea. “I’m going for your treasure. Unless you kill me first,” he mutters darkly. 

“Give me half and I won’t,” Flint blurts out rashly, setting his pistol on Silver’s desk with a thud. 

“Why not just kill me now and go after it yourself? You could just take it all that way,” Silver says, picking up Flint’s pistol and examining it. “Or, of course, it needs must be pointed out that I could just kill you here, now. Why shouldn’t I do that?” he asks, casually holding Flint’s pistol in his large hands, inspecting it closely before putting it down again. 

“Because your map is wrong,” Flint says bluntly, snatching the pistol back and tucking it safely away in its holster. 

Silver looks up sharply. “Hawkins,” he says, beckoning the young man close. “Captain Flint tells me the map is wrong. You found me this map, did you not?”

“Aye sir,” he responds, shifting restlessly next to Silver where he’s standing at his left side. 

“But it is, to your knowledge, correct?” Silver asks, and Hawkins nods mutely. “So you’re calling Flint a liar, then.”

“Aye sir,” Hawkins says again, staring Flint down with a certain smirking smugness to him such that Flint wants to punch him right in his pretty mouth. 

“What do you say to that?” Silver asks Flint, stroking his beard contemplatively with one hand. Flint looks up over his head and can see now that the creature he’s got in a cage is a sloth. Bizarre. 

“I say your Hawkins is either stupid or a liar. I know where the treasure is buried, I put it in the fucking ground myself,” Flint grits out. 

“Per’aps your memory is failing you,” Hawkins says, smarmy as anything. “You _are_ rather old.”

Flint sees red, and the next thing he knows he’s charged at Hawkins and has the smaller man pinned to the wall, one hand gripping his throat tight. His blue eyes are bulging and he’s quickly turning purple, gasping for air. 

“Flint!” Silver roars, and then he’s there, right behind him, pulling him forcefully off Hawkins with both hands. Flint lets him, just barely. “Jesus _Christ_. I’ll thank you not to strangle my quartermaster.”

Flint shakes Silver’s hands off him, seething, and turns to pace a few steps away while Hawkins coughs and recovers.   
“So you say the map is wrong,” Silver says, turning slowly to regard Flint. Now that he’s standing, it’s clear to Flint he’s gotten himself another false leg from somewhere - no more crutch. He looks strong, healthy. Intimidating, almost. “How do I know you aren’t just trying to trick me?”

“What good would tricking you do me?” Flint asks softly as his mind whirls, folding his arms over his chest and staring down at his own feet. He contemplates his choices, looking at his own blurred reflection in the dull shine of his boots. “Why did I even tell you the map is wrong or offer to help you find the chest, hm? I could just kill you, then take your ship and go get it myself.”

“You wouldn’t, and you can’t. You have no crew, mine would like as not kill you for killing me, and on top of everything else you’re supposed to be dead,” Silver says flatly, with a bitter air that makes Flint think he really did believe the stories of Flint dying of rum in Savannah. Flint can feel the weight of his gaze on him for long moments before he speaks again at last. “As far as your threat of murdering me goes, if you’d wanted to do it you would have a long time ago, or at least when you first came in here. But here you are talking to me instead.” He pauses. “I have a map, but it’s wrong. You know where to go, but have no ship or crew, and no easy way to get either. I’m guessing you have no money, either.” 

Flint tightens his face into a scowl, feeling a muscle in his jaw twitch. “Perhaps.”

“It would seem, then, that you need me,” Silver says, and as though he can sense Flint is about to protest, adds hastily, “and I, unfortunately, need you, too.” Again he strokes his beard, making a show of mulling things over. “If I let you come with me and my men, you’ll show me where the chest is truly buried and I’ll give you one fourth of what’s inside. Do we have an accord?”

“No. I said half,” Flint reminds him pointedly, glancing up to stare into those keen, shrewd blue eyes. 

“One third,” Silver bargains, narrow eyes becoming more so as he regards Flint warily. It’s clear he doesn't trust him, but neither does Flint particularly trust Silver; they’re even. “Final offer I’m willing to make.”

“Half,” Flint grunts, unwilling to bend on the issue. If he wants to put himself back together, if he wants a second chance at some semblance of a life, if he wants the cold, bad blood between himself and Silver to dry at last - it cannot be less than half. He knows by now that he obviously isn’t going to kill Silver, but he won’t be taken advantage of by him, either. 

“Half it is,” Silver finally agrees, reluctantly, and stretches his hand out to Flint’s to seal their deal. Flint grasps it for only a moment, perfunctory, but that seems to be enough for Silver. “We leave in two days’ time at first light. Please don’t try to kill any more of my men, either here on land or once we’re underway.” 

Two days later finds him aboard the ship _Solomon’s Folly_ , scrupulously avoiding Hawkins lest he get a sudden urge to try to kill him again. Silver runs a tight ship, which doesn’t surprise Flint at all and also inspires in him a peculiar, almost paternal sort of pride. For all his many faults, he’s a good captain, is Long John Silver. 

Flint toils and works with the rest of the crew and gives a false name and story when asked. Only Hawkins and Silver know the truth about him, and Silver is too smart to tell anyone else (Hawkins is too dumb, and too afraid of Flint, besides). He doesn’t so much avoid Silver as he just doesn’t have much to do with him, at least during the day. At night, sometimes, Silver asks him to his cabin to look over sea charts or the map of the island. He doesn’t ever linger, in part because he doesn’t want to seem suspicious to the other men and also because he can feel an odd, lightning-strike sort of tension between himself and Silver that is utterly familiar and appalling all at once. He doesn’t care for it, so he avoids Silver in order to extricate himself from that unnerving green sky feeling. Like the moment before a storm hits, it roils tempestuously within him, threatening devastation. Further devastation, he supposes, since any close relationship he and Silver ever had is long since destroyed. 

It will take weeks to reach the island, though it may as well be years for how long it seems to Flint. The days begin to stretch on ad infinitum, blending into one another such that he loses track of time nearly completely. One night during their journey he sits with Silver in his cabin as the sun goes down, on the opposite side of the desk from where he used to be. An untouched cup of black rum rests in front of him, quietly taunting him and his false death. Silver’s pet, the ill-tempered sloth, sleeps hanging by its claws from a rope strung up behind him. Flint has begun to hate the bug-eyed, snub-nosed, ridiculously furry creature. The feeling is mutual, if how often Kraken (trust Silver to give his pet a ridiculous name) poops in Flint’s shoes is any indication.

“I’ve been meaning to say something to you,” Silver begins, drawing Flint’s attention away from the sloth, and he must be nervous because he’s fidgeting with his rings one after the other. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m s—”

“Don’t,” Flint interrupts, more sharply than he intended. Seeing the anguish, the regret, in Silver’s eyes, he reaches out impulsively to rest one hand on his bearded cheek. “Don’t,” he says again, softer. 

To his great shock, Silver turns his head toward his palm and rubs his face against it for a moment, catlike, before abruptly sitting back and looking determinedly away. It’s almost like he forgets himself, for a moment. Flint makes an excuse and leaves quickly, before anything else can happen. It’s too much, being around Silver when he’s showing that much vulnerability. He can deal with cocky Silver, with pirate king Silver, even cheeky arsehole Silver. But seeing him bare himself that way - even briefly - is overwhelming. 

They try to avoid each other, mostly successfully, for the rest of the trip to Skeleton Island. Flint grows more suspicious of Hawkins as time goes on - who is he, exactly, and what made Silver’s crew choose him as quartermaster? He’s not particularly skilled, nor is he very smart. On one of the rare occasions in which Flint finds himself alone again with Silver, he decides it’s time he asked. 

“Why Jim Hawkins? What makes him worthy of being your right hand man?” he asks, warm and loose with rum, listening to the ship creak around them. A small part of him has missed this. 

“He’s a good man and he’s not crafty enough to mutiny,” Silver says, wiping his mouth on the back of his arm. “He is young, though. Impulsive. And he needs to learn to hold his tongue.”

“Sounds familiar,” Flint mutters, and only jumps a little when Silver barks out a loud, startled laugh.

“Besides which, he brought me the map when he could’ve just fucked off with it himself,” Silver says, his throat working as he takes another long drink of rum. Flint is so focused on not staring, it takes him a moment to realize what Silver just said. 

“How do you mean?” Flint asks then, getting a sinking feeling in his gut. He reaches out and fiddles with a trinket on Silver’s desk, a small, smooth skull carved from some kind of dark and precious stone. It’s cool and hard under his fingers, and fits nicely in his palm. 

“He says he got it off a woman in the brothel. Seems a previous customer of hers had been going on and on about how he got the Black Spot from Long John Silver, then died rather suddenly of apoplexy. She went through his things, as one might expect, and in his sea chest she found that map. She gave it to Jim, being particularly fond of him and his...talents, if you get my meaning,” Silver says, a smirk curving one corner of his mouth. 

“And you believe that?” Flint sputters, taken aback. Has Silver taken leave of his senses? The story is clearly a lie, and not a good one. 

“Well, no, not entirely. It’s a little too convenient, the map’s owner dying and the whore just so happens to give the thing to Jim. Besides, I’ve never sent anyone a Black Spot in my life,” Silver says, and Flint relaxes a touch. “But as I said, Jim’s really not crafty enough to be plotting against me. I don’t know where or how he actually got the map, but I don’t believe he’s got bad intentions.”

“And the fact that the map is wrong, does that not change your mind whatsoever?” Flint asks, squinting at Silver, uncertain. He wants Silver to be more wary of Hawkins - something about him rings false to Flint, and he needs Silver to notice it too. 

“It does make me more suspicious than perhaps I was before,” Silver admits, fidgeting, looking down at the desk and then up at Flint. “But I don’t think he’s capable of such great deception. He’s a simple boy.”

“Take care that you don’t underestimate him,” Flint says slowly, rising from the desk with a mixture of worry and irritation churning in him. Worry that Hawkins is a liability, and irritation that Silver can’t or won’t see it. “It’s dangerous, underestimating a boy like that. I speak from experience.”

He departs Silver’s cabin then, deliberately avoiding looking at him. He doesn’t want to see his reaction to those words. 

Not long after their conversation about Hawkins, their journey to Skeleton Island finally ends. Silver’s plan is to take Flint and Hawkins to help him find the treasure, and once they’ve worked out a reasonable path to it, return for the rest of the crew to dig the chest up and carry it back to the ship. But the plan goes slightly awry, as they arrive to the island later in the day than Silver had anticipated - the sun is already starting to dip below the horizon, and there’s no way they’ll get to the treasure and back before dark. Still, stubborn as ever, Silver refuses to consider any other course of action. 

“We can find it tonight, at least, and bring the crew round to it at first light,” he says as he rummages in his sea chest with his back to Flint, the two of them preparing to go ashore. 

“But it’s already growing dark,” Flint protests. “And with your leg, and how treacherous that jungle is...it can wait until tomorrow morning. Be reasonable.”

Silver looks up sharply, straightening and turning slowly to regard Flint. “I can handle myself in the dark and the jungle as well as any other man. Hawkins and I are going. Come with us or don’t,” he says bitingly, then brushes past Flint, stalking irritably from the cabin. 

Flint curses under his breath and follows Silver, grimly determined now. He won’t let Silver make the trek alone with Hawkins; something deep within him tells him that the man is not who he seems. Over the course of the long journey, Flint has not come around on his opinion of Hawkins whatsoever - if anything, he trusts him even less than he did when first they set out. 

They leave _Solomon’s Folly_ as a trio, climbing into a dinghy that Silver and Flint row with Hawkins watching the shore from the prow, all three of them armed with pistols and swords as a precaution. Flint spares a brief thought for Billy Bones as he rows, and wonders idly if somewhere on the island they might find Billy’s desiccated remains. He deserves no better a death, Flint thinks. 

The sun slowly dips lower in the sky as they drag the small rowboat ashore. Flint can’t help but notice how Silver’s stride hitches; he wouldn’t be surprised if the new false leg is aggravating his old wound just like the last one did. Trust Silver not to say a word about it or do something sensible like see a doctor. Flint carries a lantern in one hand and a sword in the other, hacking at the undergrowth. He leads the way, listening to Silver’s distinctive stride behind him and, behind Silver, the quiet footfalls of Jim Hawkins. 

It takes them longer than he remembered to reach the spot, and by the time they arrive it’s full dark. Flint is panting in the warm night air of the jungle, and as he gets his bearings near the place where he buried the chest so long ago, a light, misty rain begins falling. He feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and the atmosphere between him and the other two men seems to grow irrepressibly thicker. 

“This is it,” he announces needlessly when they come to a stop, gesturing to the ground at their feet. 

“How d’we know you haven’t led us to the wrong place?” Hawkins asks, fidgeting. He looks agitated, nervous, like something is amiss. His demeanor sets Flint’s teeth on edge. 

“Why the fuck would I bother to do that? Look, we’ve beaten a path up here, now it’ll be easier to find it again in the morning with the rest of the men. We should go back down to the ship and return when it’s light out,” Flint says, then turns to Silver. “What do you say, Captain?” he asks. 

“I say we go back to the ship and come back at daybreak,” Silver says. He begins to turn away as though to head back down the steep mountain they’re standing on, but a shout from Hawkins stops him. 

“Stop!” he barks and Flint stares, confused, while Silver slowly turns back to face Hawkins. Hawkins, who has his pistol in hand now, raised, aimed right at Silver. Right between his eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to end this way. He said it would be different for us,” Hawkins says through gritted teeth. 

“Jim,” Silver murmurs, raising his hands in self-defense, in supplication. “I don’t know what you’re talking about or what you think you’re doing, but—”

“No! You were supposed to follow _my_ map! It was all going to, to go— according to plan. I’d come back alone! I’d get the treasure and I’d be the Captain,” he snarls. “I deserve it! Me! He told me so!” he shouts suddenly, red-faced, furious. “I’m not a fucking invalid. I’m not a fucking coward who hides behind a better man’s myth,” he growls. Then he wheels around and now he’s aiming for Flint instead, hand trembling as he holds the pistol level with Flint’s face. His eyes are red and his nose is streaming; he looks like a madman. “And you. You weren’t supposed to be here at all. You’re supposed to be dead, and you deserve no better! You betrayed him! You left him here to die alone, you rotten, miserable, son of a fucking—”

He starts to pull the trigger but he doesn’t get the chance to fire at Flint. There’s a flash of light in the dark, damp jungle, and a shot echoes through the trees like rolling thunder. It’s over in an instant, and yet that one instant seems to Flint to stretch into eternity. 

Then Hawkins falls, dead, bleeding crimson from his left temple. Silver stands with a smoking pistol in hand and blood splattered on his face, his expression equal parts disbelief and resignation.

“You were right about Jim Hawkins,” he says after a long moment of stunned silence. His voice is even lower than usual, almost guttural. Weary. 

“Evidently,” Flint mutters grimly. “I’m sorry, Silver. I...can’t imagine what it feels like, to do what you just did.”

“But of course you can,” Silver replies, holstering his pistol with a false, bitter smile. “You shot one of your men to save me, once upon a time.”

“I suppose I did,” Flint says. He stares at Silver. Silver stares back, and maybe it’s the rain or the darkness or the acrid tang of gunpowder in the air, but that charged feeling is back. He can’t explain it, and it frightens him, but it intrigues him just the same. Flint’s breath grows short and his spine tingles. “...what now?”

“We have to hide the body, or at least move it away from here so the crew doesn’t see him first thing tomorrow. We should also come up with a good story for what happened here and how he died, unless we want to tell them the truth,” Silver says, and Flint can practically see the wheels turning in his mind. Silver looks up, then, and their eyes meet. Slowly, Silver starts walking - but not toward the lifeless body of Jim Hawkins. 

Toward Flint. 

“Silver,” Flint rumbles once he’s standing close, so close they’re breathing the same air. “What are you doing?” he asks in a whisper. He knows, then, that Silver is feeling it too - the irrepressible force pulling them toward one another. 

Silver leans in, their chests brushing together, one of his incongruously huge hands slowly rising to cup Flint’s jaw. When he replies, Flint can feel his lips moving on his ear, branding the words into his skin. 

“Take me apart,” he says, and Flint slowly sinks down with him to the soft, damp earth. 

When their lips finally meet for the first time, it feels inevitable, like everything that's happened to bring them here, now, has been purposefully leading to this. Flint stretches his body on top of Silver’s, settling between his thighs with their hips pressed firmly together.

“God, Silver,” he growls, grasping his curls in one hand and yanking his head back roughly to bite his throat. He doesn’t know what’s come over him but he’s helpless to stop it. 

“Call me John,” gasps the man beneath him, and then he keens as Flint sinks his teeth into his neck.

“John,” Flint whispers tenderly, and tears into him.

The rain has grown heavier now, from a light drizzle to a steady shower, gradually dampening them both. They struggle to hastily remove one another's sodden clothing, there on the jungle floor a stone’s throw from Silver's dead quartermaster. Flint focuses on getting Silver naked first, needing to touch, to really feel what he's only imagined in fits and starts over so many lonely years. He's thought of Silver constantly while apart from him, loving and hating him by turns. Here, now, he feels a burning need to possess him - to, as Silver asked, take him apart. He sits back once Silver is stripped bare, drinking in the sight of him. 

“Your turn,” Silver murmurs, reaching for Flint.

He lets Silver undress him urgently, inhaling sharply when rather suddenly he finds himself nude on top of a likewise Silver. It’s all moving so fast. He is at a bit of a loss, though - he wants to be inside Silver, but of course has nothing to ease his way, not having planned for this excursion to end in murder and sex (one or the other, maybe, but certainly not both). The last thing on earth that he wants to do is injure Silver’s person while trying to show him pleasure, so he wraps one hand around both their cocks at once and tells himself this will have to do, for now. He strokes them both quickly, his own touch and the heat of Silver’s cock aligned with his own sending sparks up his spine.

“Ahh, please,” Silver gasps beneath him. “You beast, I need more.”

“Later,” Flint promises him. “I can't hurt you.”

He strokes their cocks with a hunger, a desperation he knows they both feel. He revels in how their skin slips and stutters together with the wetness of the rain falling on their bodies. He buries his face in Silver’s neck and inhales the earthy scent of his rain-drenched hair, running his tongue over Silver’s hot, salty skin. 

Before he knows it, he’s tensing up, his toes curling in the wet ground, his thighs tight and his teeth digging none too gently into the flesh of Silver’s neck. Silver shouts beneath him and for a moment he thinks it’s from pain, that he’s bitten him too hard this time, but then he feels Silver coming slickly between them and can do nothing but follow suit. His orgasm explodes out of him, rattling him down to his bones. He’s immediately exhausted, groaning his helpless pleasure against Silver’s skin before raising his head to kiss him for an hour, a week, a year. Time nearly stops. 

“You kiss me like you’re drowning,” Silver says hoarsely when he finally pulls back, gulping air. 

“I am. I was. I have been,” Flint murmurs deliriously, then rests his head on Silver’s bare chest, letting himself be soothed by the steady rapid pounding of his heart. “Your heart is beating so fast, like a rabbit’s.”

Silver chuckles. “I know. I— just. I’ve wanted this for…” He trails off and when Flint glances up, Silver is staring at him unflinchingly, expression impassive, almost beatific. 

“You realize, of course, that this changes things,” Flint says, sitting up slowly and resting one hand on Silver’s lower belly, in the sticky mess they both made. He’s soft there, so tender and vulnerable. He doesn’t flinch away from Flint’s touch - clearly, he trusts him implicitly. It makes Flint feel giddy. 

“I know,” Silver says again, and folds his arms behind his head. “But if you think for one second that I’m letting you go without indulging me in the good, hard fuck I deserve, you’ve never been more wrong,” he rumbles, one eyebrow cocked. 

Flint lets out a startled laugh and shakes his head a little, reaching for his clothes. He has a handkerchief in one pocket that he uses to clean them both off - not ideal, but it will serve. Once they’ve both dressed and set themselves to rights, Flint stands and pulls Silver carefully to his feet, then tenderly wipes Hawkins’s blood off his face with the sleeve of his shirt. The rain is still falling, but in the heat of the moment he had ceased to be aware of it. He notices it again now, warm water sticking his hair to his skin, sluicing down the back of his neck, the whole jungle alive with the peculiar sticky-sweet smell of rot that permeates a tropical place when it rains. 

“I suppose we have to deal with that now,” Silver mutters grimly, gesturing to the corpse of Jim Hawkins. 

“Quite right,” Flint agrees, reluctant. “I suggest we drag him off into the brush over there and hope no one stumbles upon him when we come for the treasure in the morning.”

“And if my men ask me where he is? Or when they ask, I should say, since it’s only a matter of time,” Silver says, looking sideways at Flint. 

“Tell them the truth,” Flint urges him softly. “You were his captain and he betrayed you; it had to be done,” he says, folding his arms over his chest. 

“I betrayed you and you didn’t kill me,” Silver says, putting into words the feeling that’s been rattling around in Flint’s chest for months, if not years. 

“That’s different,” Flint insists as he and Silver move in unison to pick up Hawkins’s surprisingly light body and carry it off into the thick undergrowth. He looks so young in death, even more so than in life. He was little more than a boy, Flint muses - a misguided, foolhardy boy. 

“How?” Silver asks, or maybe Flint just thinks he does. He answers regardless. 

“I loved you. Well. Love you,” Flint says haltingly, not looking at Silver as they heave the corpse into the brush, both of them grunting with the grim effort. “Which doesn’t mean I completely forgive you,” he adds hastily, dusting his palms off on his trousers. “Only that I don’t have it in me to murder you.”

Silver snorts, then looks keenly at Flint. “I don’t have it in me to murder you, either,” he says with a certain gentleness, turning away and taking a few hitching steps toward the path that will lead them back to the shore and the waiting dinghy. Flint silently offers Silver his shoulder for support, and when Silver rests his hand there, Flint knows he loves him, too. 

They row back to the ship under cover of darkness, silent at first but for the sound of the oars gliding into and out of the water. Flint thinks soberly about what they’ve done - about Hawkins lying dead in the jungle, killed for a treasure he never even saw. He thinks about the two of them in a desperate embrace mere feet from the dead man, and wonders for a moment if Silver meant it when he said he wanted Flint to fuck him. 

“Who do you think he was talking about?” Silver asks, breaking into Flint’s jumbled thoughts. 

“I thought you would know. Does he have a partner on the ship, or the island?” Flint asks, surprised that Silver is apparently as confused about this as he is, himself. 

“Not that he’s ever mentioned. He actually, ah.” Silver ducks his head and even in the dark Flint can see his ears go pink with embarrassment. “He made advances toward me more than once.”

“I see,” Flint says, unable to keep the amusement completely out of his voice. “You don’t think…” He trails off, waiting a beat for Silver to catch on. 

“No. He’s dead, isn’t he?” Silver asks, glancing up to meet Flint’s gaze as they row together. “...isn’t he?” he asks again, sounding less certain. It’s not the first time Silver has read Flint’s mind, nor will it be the last, but it gives Flint a little thrill just the same. 

“I had assumed as much, but Hawkins was looking straight at me when he said ‘you left him here to die,’ and it’s not like I’ve left a whole slew of people on this island to die,” Flint muses. 

“True. But there’s no way Billy could’ve planned something so— elaborate. He was no mastermind; he was smart but too impulsive and emotional. And involving another man in his plans so skillfully that even I didn’t see through it? No. Impossible. I’m sure he meant someone else,” Silver says, as though attempting to convince himself. 

“Besides, how would he even have got off the island in the first place?” Flint asks, more than willing to follow Silver’s line of reasoning since the alternative is just too bizarre to be believed. 

“Don’t know. Seems impossible if you ask me,” Silver says with finality as they reach the ship in the dinghy. They scale the side, Silver first - awkwardly - and Flint behind. The ship is dark and mostly quiet, and the few men left awake on watch are either too tired to notice Jim is missing or too smart to ask why. Silver greets them perfunctorily, then makes haste for his cabin with Flint, shutting and loudly locking the door behind them.

Flint watches him, curious, then can’t keep from speaking what’s at the forefront of his mind. “I believe you said something about me fucking you?” he asks airily, folding his arms over his chest. 

“You’re not too old yet to get off twice in one night, are you?” Silver asks, advancing on him. Then Flint’s back is pressed to the door, his mouth possessed by Silver’s tongue, and whatever smart remark he might’ve given in answer is swallowed by a helpless moan. 

He pulls back only momentarily to yank Silver’s shirt off over his head, then kisses him again while walking him backward towards the bed. 

“This is my cabin, I’m in charge here,” Silver protests playfully against Flint’s mouth. He sits down on the edge of his bed and pulls Flint down with him, sliding one hand into his trousers without preamble. 

“Fuck,” Flint breathes eloquently, pushing into Silver’s hand. 

“That’s the idea,” Silver agrees, his voice a low, dark purr in Flint’s ear.

There’s a brief struggle and then Flint ends up on top of Silver, steadily divesting him of the rest of his clothing. He didn’t really get to see him before, in the dark, rainy jungle - there’s only one lamp lit in Silver’s cabin, but it’s enough. He takes in the wiry muscles, the tattoo on Silver’s chest that Flint knows wasn’t there years before, the soft vulnerable belly with the dark trail of hair leading down, down. 

“God, John,” is all he can think to say, struck dumb by how good he looks. He reaches out to the nailed-down bedside table, rummaging in its sole drawer before coming up, triumphantly, with a vial of oil. He sets it reverently on the sheet next to Silver, giving him a quick, crooked grin. 

“How did you know that’d be in there?” Silver asks, flushed and breathless. 

“I just had a feeling,” Flint says, rolling his shoulders in an easy shrug. He pulls his shirt off over his head and casts it aside, fighting his way out of the rest of his clothing hastily. He can’t seem to get undressed fast enough for his liking. He picks up the vial again and uncorks it, then raises it to his nose for an inquisitive sniff. “Coconut?”

“Yes. It has a variety of uses,” Silver says, one eyebrow raised. “I’m sure you can guess the one I’m most interested in right now.”

Taking the hint, Flint pours some of the viscous, sweet-smelling stuff on his fingers. He sits up on his knees between Silver’s spread legs, reaching down to slowly ease one finger into him. Silver makes a high, soft noise and says something that might be ‘finally.’ It makes Flint’s breath catch in his throat. He pushes another finger gently into Silver once he’s sure he can take it, watching his face for even the slightest hint of discomfort. 

“I won’t break,” Silver says after a moment, shifting his hips with what can only be impatience. He’s so hard it looks painful; Flint can’t wait to relieve him of that particular pain. “Get on with it,” Silver all but growls, staring challengingly up at Flint.

“Hush. I’m taking my time,” Flint says resolutely, running his free hand down Silver’s side to his hip, caressing his golden-brown skin. He pushes a third finger into him then, wondering how long he can draw this out before he drives Silver crazy. 

“Son of a fucking whore,” Silver wheezes when Flint rubs his fingers over that spot inside him, so of course Flint does it again. This time Silver just shouts and throws his head back, then grits his teeth. 

“You look so beautiful this way, John. Spread out for me, hard and wanting,” Flint purrs, free hand tracing idle circles on his lower stomach now, teasingly just out of reach of his cock. “I’ve wanted you for such a long time, and now that I have you, I’m determined to savor it.”

“Your savoring is going to drive me mad,” Silver groans, shifting restlessly. “Please, James.”  
Flint works his fingers inside Silver, rocking them in and out, watching how his body undulates in response. He hasn’t felt this depth of desire for someone in a very long time. 

“Please,” Silver says again, in a desperate whimper this time, and at last Flint elects to have mercy on him. 

He pulls his fingers out gently and takes Silver by the hips, turning him over onto his belly and maneuvering him up on his knees. He shifts forward to kneel just behind him, then takes himself in hand and pushes slowly - ever so slowly - into his eager body. He’s so hot and tight inside, Flint pitches forward on top of him, burying his face in Silver’s hair and groaning like he’s dying an immensely pleasurable death. 

“By god,” he whispers, sliding one arm around Silver’s waist and pulling back, then thrusting deep in him again. His world has narrowed to just his body and Silver’s, and the incredible feeling of being inside him. 

“Ah, James,” Silver gasps, moving with him. 

Flint means to take this slowly, to draw out the pleasure of every single moment - but he just can’t hold himself back. Now that he’s inside Silver, he needs him so fiercely it’s all he can do to keep their encounter from ending in a matter of minutes. He slides his arms around his waist, sinks his teeth deep into his shoulder, and thrusts into him with all the strength of his years of pent-up longing. He manages to slide one hand down Silver’s torso to grasp his cock with desperate fingers, rubbing and stroking. 

“John,” he whispers against his skin, then bites into him again as he comes, stars exploding behind his closed eyes. He feels Silver’s release coating his hand a moment later and hears him shouting incoherently, bearing fervent witness to the ecstasy between them. 

After a moment Flint withdraws and rolls off him so that they might both catch their breath, and isn’t surprised at all when Silver pitches forward face down next to him with a low moan of delight. 

“That was…” Flint rasps, turning his head to look at Silver out of the corner of his eye. He can’t find the words, but he trusts Silver can. 

“...worth waiting for,” Silver says into his pillow, then turns to face Flint and graces him with a tired but genuine smile that makes Flint’s heart pound a little harder. 

Flint tries to think, then, of something profound to say in response, something worthy of the earth-shifting moment that just passed between them. Instead he stretches one arm out and Silver goes willingly, the two of them curling up together nude, filthy, and pleasantly exhausted. He drifts off with the scent of Silver’s hair in his nose and his warm, soft skin under his palm.

When he wakes in the morning, he expects to feel something - guilt? Shame? Uncertainty, at least? - that might indicate he regrets falling into bed with Silver. But he feels no such thing. Indeed, as he sits up in the captain’s bed, white sheets pooled in his lap, he looks at a still-sleeping Silver and feels only a deep sense of unshakable calm and satisfaction. He can sense the anchored ship rocking gently beneath him, and the warm breeze that rushes through the open windows to caress his skin seems to whisper ‘yes’ in his ears. 

Silver stirs and Flint looks away, not wanting it to be so obvious that he’d been staring at him in his sleep. He can’t let on how besotted he already feels. 

“I need to gather the men,” Silver mumbles, clearly half-asleep still, as he sits up and rubs his eyes with his fists like a child. Lord, but he’s achingly beautiful. Lord, but Flint is happily doomed. “Take them up the mountain and finally retrieve that fucking treasure.”

“Half that fucking treasure,” Flint reminds him dryly, teasingly. “The other half belongs to Captain Flint.”

“Ah, has he been raised from the grave, then? Resurrected not unlike Lazarus?” Silver teases in reply, smirking at his own witty remark as he gets out of bed to dress. 

“Reborn, perhaps, more than resurrected. Minor semantic difference,” Flint muses as he heaves himself out of bed with a groan and searches for his trousers. Once he’s suitably clothed, he saunters round to the other side of the bed, looking Silver up and down, taking him in. Reading him, as always. “Your crew will want to know what became of their quartermaster, Captain Silver,” he reminds him, fixing his misaligned shirt buttons. 

“I shot him,” Silver says bluntly, swallowing, “because he was going to kill you and I...couldn’t let that happen,” he says, then shifts his weight restlessly from real foot to iron and back again. It’s clear he wants to say more to Flint but is holding himself back, too wary or perhaps too ravaged by past events to say what he really feels. 

“I know,” Flint says, giving him leeway not to say what they both know he feels - he can’t put it into words yet, and he may not ever manage to. But Flint, perhaps better than anyone else alive, understands. He doesn’t need to hear the words aloud to know they’re there in Silver’s mind. 

For a while they just stand facing each other in Silver’s cabin, breathing the same air and thinking the same thoughts. Then Silver leans in and steals a fleeting kiss before walking stiffly from the room, out to the deck of his ship to assemble the crew. Flint watches him go, thinking with a certain divine clarity that for all the bad blood that’s ever been spilled between them, there is no one alive he’d rather wake up next to. 

Once they get the crew in order and start the grueling journey it doesn’t take long - they’re only a short ways up from the sandy shore of the island - for one man, a bold and outspoken sort, to ask about Jim. 

“Hawkins is dead,” Silver says in reply, his voice ringing out clear and sure. “He betrayed me and attempted to murder both myself and my companion, here,” he says, gesturing to Flint. “I couldn’t let a man with such malice in his heart continue to serve under me, and so I shot him. As I would any of you, should you decide to stage a mutiny of your own. Let his death be a message to you all.”

Hawkins’s name is not spoken again. 

The long march to the treasure is difficult, and by the time they reach where the chest is buried, the sun is high and bright and beating down mercilessly on all of them. But the work to retrieve the chest from its cool, earthen hiding place goes quickly with such a capable crew, and before the sun has fully sunk below the horizon they’re down to the beach again, rowing back out to Solomon’s Folly. Flint is not particularly surprised when, upon reaching the ship, Silver divvies up his half of the gold among his men and keeps very little for himself. He congratulates the crew for their hardiness and admirable determination, and delivers an only slightly overwrought speech about how very much they all deserve their share of the treasure. They cheer for him, for their eloquent showman of a captain, and Flint wonders not for the first time where Silver got his flair for the dramatic. The sun fully sets then, and in the gathering darkness they’re once again underway. 

That evening (after supper is concluded, of course) finds Silver and Flint in Silver’s cabin while the ship slowly drifts away from Skeleton Island, leaving all its horrors and wonders in her wake. Silver collapses into the chair behind his desk with a smile on his face, and pours himself and Flint each a cup of black rum with a flourish. 

“Cheers,” Flint says, raising his in salute. “To the inimitable Captain Silver, and to Captain Flint’s treasure being found at last.”  
“And to never setting foot on that goddamn island ever again,” Silver murmurs wryly, then takes a sip before setting his cup down with a thunk. “So...from one captain to another, what am I supposed to do now?”

Flint strokes his beard, considering. “Well. Before I found you again, before all of this, I had thought I’d be as Odysseus. A bit of a grandiose comparison, a lofty goal perhaps, but I’m sure you take my meaning.”

“Hmm, yes, I see. Leave all this behind and find true peace somewhere on land,” Silver says thoughtfully, twisting one end of his mustache between thumb and forefinger. “It does sound...bucolic. Settle somewhere warm, far from the ocean and her stormy whims. Never work again, unless I choose to do so.”

“Come with me,” Flint says, impulsive and yet completely sure of himself and his wants all at once. “We desire the same things. I meant what I said to you on the island.” He shifts in his chair and looks up to meet Silver’s wide, bright blue eyes. “I love you, John.” His heart is in his throat. 

“Yes,” Silver breathes, color high in his cheeks. He leans across his desk and kisses Flint, grinning when he sits back. “Yes. Let’s sail somewhere - far from England, far from Nassau - and walk inland until we find a place where no one gives a fuck about the sea. Let’s just...live.”

It’s a fine plan, indeed, and Flint shows his approval for it by pulling Silver out from behind his desk and dragging him, joyfully, jubilantly, to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> If you squint, this could be a prequel to my 'hope springs eternal' series. It can also just be a standalone.


End file.
